


An Act of Courage

by ShitpostingfromtheBarricade



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Don't copy to another site, Enjolras POV, Hemingway Workshop, M/M, cute only in the least conventional way, dislocated shoulder, pre-dating, these kids are just fucking idiots idk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-16
Updated: 2019-03-16
Packaged: 2019-11-19 02:52:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18129989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShitpostingfromtheBarricade/pseuds/ShitpostingfromtheBarricade
Summary: Enjolras's antics land him and Grantaire in a cell for a night, and he's pretty sure that the man hates him.Warnings:injuries (including a dislocated shoulder), description of a shoulder being reset, jail setting, alcohol mention, barfight mention (no details), language, innuendo





	An Act of Courage

**Author's Note:**

> As [PieceOfCait](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PieceOfCait/pseuds/PieceOfCait) mentioned in her [most recent fic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18085106), we recently did a Hemingway workshop, and this was the fic I chose to finish. As always, lots of love and thanks to PieceOfCait for not only humoring my reckless suggestions but also beta-reading for me. 
> 
> The prompt was: "This was a horrible idea." "This was your idea."

“This was a horrible idea.”

“This was _your_ idea.”

Enjolras doesn’t have a good counter to that, so he settles for a grimace in response. It’s true: Grantaire hadn’t exactly been the one to suggest the bar fight, but he had allowed it to happen. Really, as far as Enjolras is concerned, if Grantaire doesn’t argue with an idea it’s basically flawless.

Enjolras grunts, leaning against the wall of the cell. Drunk Him had decided that Grantaire was the perfect fighter for their cause—though Sober Him can hardly disagree that Grantaire does have a certain ‘perfect’ quality to him—and now he has to deal with the fallout, watching the most attractive man he’s ever met pace back and forth across their holding cell.

“What were you thinking?”

Enjolras isn’t used to being the drunken member of their party. He’d been _thinking_ that anyone without the capability of understanding the common-sense factor of their points might be persuaded by more base assertions of dominance. Or Grantaire without his shirt on, if it came to it (it didn’t).

Anyway. Drunk Enjolras isn’t the most logical version of himself.

“Are you hurt?” he asks instead.

Grantaire rolls his eyes with a huff. “ _‘Am I hurt,’_ he asks. No, I’m fine.” He clearly isn’t, not if the bruised eye or odd slump to his shoulder are anything to go by.

“You—” Enjolras begins.

“I’m _fine,_ ” Grantaire repeats more harshly. He continues pacing, and Enjolras curses his own drunken impulsiveness.

 _He hates me,_ he accepts glumly. _More than usual._ Sure, his schemes are normally shot down by the man from the gate or boycotted when they do come to fruition, but they’d never before landed Grantaire a record. _First time for everything,_ he supposes, frown deepening. 

“I suppose you think all of this was pretty dumb.”

Grantaire scoffs in response. Of course he does. It’s not as if he’s ever hidden the way he feels about their cause—about Enjolras’s cause. Enjolras has no intentions of ever backing down, of course, but the knowledge that he is forever being judged for it by such a remarkable, well-versed man who actually keeps up with the news on his own without having been told by Enjolras and is so familiar with so many schools of thought, including and beyond Enjolras’s own, always lingers in the back of his mind.

“ _‘Pretty dumb,’_ ” Grantaire repeats with a dry laugh. “It was absolute idiocy. Hubris in its purest form.”

Enjolras bites the inside of his mouth, staring at the floor.

“You could have gotten hurt.”

That gets Enjolras’s attention. He looks up, truly examining for the first time the painful-looking angle of Grantaire’s shoulder, the swell of his face, and the patch hair was obviously torn from. It’s harder to tell if his nose has been broken, but the bridge shows telltale signs of bruising, and a trickle of blood has dried before reaching the curve of his lip.

“I—” Enjolras starts, entirely unmarred but for some angry red marks from phantom cuffs and what will surely become yellow and purple splotches of bruising where he was grabbed by the officers. “I’m fine.”

Grantaire releases an unimpressed laugh. “Sure, this time. But what happens the next time you decide to pick a fight at Baz’s favorite biker bar, eh? Or say something off-color at trivia night at that place ‘Ferre likes? Or preach during that weird silence between songs at Courf’s club with the flamingos? You’re going to get yourself hurt far beyond anything that the cops can handle. Or get yourself killed.” Grantaire makes a move like he’s going to cross his arms but quickly aborts the action with a flinch. 

“I can handle myself,” Enjolras responds, crossing his own arms defensively. 

“Yeah, okay.”

He raises his eyebrows. “I’m not the one with the dislocated shoulder.”

“ _Temporarily_ dislocated shoulder,” Grantaire shoots back, as if that somehow makes things better. 

(It doesn’t.)

Enjolras sighs. “Will you at least let me reset it?” It’s 3AM, and it will be hours before even the most responsible of their friends come to rescue them.

Grantaire pauses in his pacing, raising his eyebrows at him. “Do you know how?”

Unfortunately. Far too many friends have come to his and Combeferre’s apartment in the dead of night with questionable injuries and even more questionable stories behind them. “I have a vague inclination in the direction,” Enjolras huffs.

Grantaire squints at him. “Is that something I said?”

“Does it matter? Are you going to let me fix your shoulder or not?”

The dark-haired man sighs. “Fine. Do you want me on the floor or the bench?”

Enjolras examines the options, pointedly ignoring the innuendo that would likely bely the question if Grantaire didn’t have a joint that had decided to convert to a transient lifestyle. “Floor is probably best. Traction and all.”

One of Grantaire’s shoulders shrugs as he lowers himself to the ground. The man is already on his knees before Enjolras can move to help, and the latter positions his hands to support the former’s good shoulder and head, gently lowering him to the ground. Enjolras expects a jeer about consent, but Grantaire must be in more pain than he’s been letting on because he allows himself to be assisted with nothing more than a grunt.

Enjolras kneels beside the man, raising the abused shoulder’s forearm. Grantaire is heavy enough that the traction is easy to achieve—on the rare occasions that Jehan comes by with such colorful excuses as 'challenging Oberon to a fight behind a diner over his opinion of Mary Shelley' and 'cow-tipping' (in Paris?), Combeferre has to kneel on top of them to keep them in place. Enjolras fights to ignore the steady hiss of pain coming from beside him as he slowly tugs the arm back into its proper place, a loud pop accompanying the man’s sharp release of air.

“Better?” Enjolras asks, sitting back.

Grantaire pushes himself up, rubbing gingerly at the freshly relocated joint once upright. “Sure as hell feels better.”

“Any fractures?”

Grantaire sighs. “Probably,” he admits. “I’ll have to see a doctor in the morning.”

Enjolras eyes the person at the desk before standing up and pulling off his shirt.

“Enjolras,” Grantaire whispers through clenched teeth. Enjolras doesn’t see why, no one cares how loud they are here. “What are you doing?”

“You need a sling, and we’re not getting one before we get out.”

Grantaire turns to the person at the desk, quickly coming to the same conclusion Enjolras had. “Where’s Dad-Cop when you need him?” The tearing of fabric seems to recapture Grantaire’s attention. “Do you mind?”

Enjolras considers where the man sits hunched on the floor, still cradling his arm. “Not really, no. Sit up on the bench, your posture’s abysmal the way you are now.”

Grantaire rolls his eyes but pushes himself up nonetheless. “Careful there E, you know how hot and bothered I get when you tell me what to do.”

Enjolras takes it as a good sign that the man seems capable of joking again. He folds the fabric in half, eyeballing the measurements from where he stands before propping one knee up on the bench for leverage beside Grantaire. “Then I imagine you must spend a lot of time in my presence rather uncomfortably,” he says as he leans in, tucking the fabric under Grantaire’s arm and pulling the ends around the man’s neck.

He doesn’t mean to, but the action brings them much closer than Enjolras had anticipated, and the words end up coming out nearly into Grantaire's neck. He can feel the man’s body heat radiating off of him, the sensation heightened all the more by Enjolras’s current state of undress. Grantaire tenses, and Enjolras hears the man’s breath stutter in a way that morphs into a dry chuckle. “Yeah, I suppose that wouldn’t be an altogether untrue statement.”

Enjolras’s mind is reeling as he ties the ends of the sling behind Grantaire’s neck, fingers fumbling at the fabric and fighting to free stray curls that have found their way into the attempted knot. He knows it’s just the older man teasing him, it has to be, but like this he can feel the staccato of Grantaire's pulse and the warm flutter of the man's breath on his arm, and maybe, _just maybe,_ it isn’t. 

_This is my moment,_ he thinks. Here, in this cell, with Grantaire’s face bloodied and broken and a strange guard on-duty and Enjolras’s mangled shirt wrapped around Grantaire’s bruising shoulder. It smells awful, Enjolras realizes suddenly, a mix of blood and sweat and piss, and there’s definitely the stench of stale alcohol on one or both of them. But Enjolras doesn’t have the luxury of choosing moments, and he doesn’t want to let this one pass, even if it’s only a fleeting chance.

“Well, you don’t always make it comfortable to be around either.” Enjolras’s hands have completed their ministrations, but he doesn’t move yet, hoping desperately that the man understands his meaning. He waits a beat, swallowing before he pulls back to meet Grantaire’s eyes.

The man’s expression is stormy, brows furrowed as he looks at Enjolras, and Enjolras feels every bit of the measurement. He suddenly feels stupid for taking off his shirt so thoughtlessly, the recklessness of the action settling in. 

He’s blown it, he can tell. Grantaire takes what he wants without hesitation—Enjolras has seen it before, from victories in the ring to caresses in dark bars. He can mark the night’s festivities down to four pink fizzy drinks, compliments of Courfeyrac, but this? This act of stupidity is all his own.

He’s so engrossed in his own failure that he jolts when a feather-light sensation makes contact with his jaw—Grantaire’s fingers, brushing the length. The man’s expression has softened somewhat, and Enjolras realizes that he’s trembling at the man’s touch. “R…”

The gentleness of Grantaire’s words hit him a full second before he can piece together their meaning. “Are you fucking serious right now?”

Enjolras’s chest fills with shame, and he averts his eyes.

“Fuck, no, I mean. Shit, I’m really bad at this.” The man’s fingertips glide back along Enjolras’s jaw, thumb brushing gentle circles over his cheekbone. “I want to...I mean, if you do, then I do, but...here? Now? Really?”

Enjolras swallows. “I suppose I could have planned things a little better.”

Grantaire snorts, but it don’t sound haughty or irritated like Enjolras expects it to. “I suppose you could have. Look, let’s at least wait things out until the morning. I’ll be showered, you’ll be sober. It’ll be great.”

“And you’d...consider? This?” Enjolras knows his eyes probably betray too much hope, but his heart is beating too fast to worry about that right this second.

“I might consent to try you,” the man smirks.

It’s Enjolras’s turn to squint at Grantaire. “...is that something I said?”

“Does it matter?” Grantaire responds, a twinkle in his eye. “Come on, sit down, you must be cold. Or does Icarus maintain Helio’s heat after his failed attempts at flight?”

He doesn’t feel cold in the slightest, but he has no interest in arguing this point, and he quickly moves to Grantaire’s other side to allow himself to be tucked into the larger man’s warmth.

“Sorry for ruining the moment,” Grantaire murmurs into Enjolras’s hair. 

“You didn’t ruin anything,” he assures.

Enjolras snakes his arm around Grantaire’s waist, smiling when the man responds with a squeeze. It’ll be okay: they’ll sleep until someone from their call-list comes to get them, and then they’ll talk, and they might have breakfast, or kiss, or both, or neither. And they might date, or maybe they’ll go forward from here in determined and disappointing silence. But that’s for tomorrow: right now, they have this space in time, this moment carved out on the cusp of eternity, and Enjolras is okay.

**Author's Note:**

>  **Drunk me:** Dislocated shoulders sound like a fun plot device.  
>  **Sober me:** Yeah, but I don't actually know anything about them.  
>  **Drunk me:** Sounds like a problem that _I don't have to deal with._
> 
>  **Drunk PieceOfCait, editing (paraphrased):** So...the dislocated shoulder's going to be an excuse for touching, right????  
>  **Hungover me the following morning:** idk, maybe?
> 
> So anyway, if you want to know more about treating dislocated shoulders I recommend [this wikihow](https://www.wikihow.com/Fix-a-Dislocated-Shoulder) (apparently peer-reviewed by real surgeons and stuff, reliable for all of your barfight needs). If you'd like to yell at me for not inviting you to our Hemingway Workshop or want to actually say something about the fic, you can comment below or visit me at my [tumblr](http://shitpostingfromthebarricade.tumblr.com). 
> 
> (I love comments and feedback though, seriously, you cannot even imagine.)


End file.
